by Jill Malone
While in Nelson, her editor had e-mailed her three pages of notes. Congratulated her on the expert way she had captured her aunt’s tone. He was pleased, clearly, with the work, and his notes had been grammatical issues rather than technical ones, and easily dealt with. After the copy edit, the project would officially be completed, and then Claire might do anything. Anything at all.
Bailey would be amazed, by the anything that seemed to be taking shape in Claire’s mind. A bakery: intimate, open until early afternoon six days a week, minimally staffed, and experimental with its delicacies. Claire would be the silent partner, responsible for financials; Bailey would handle management and daily operations. And prior to her decision on Glacier, Claire had given Liv the job of design and upkeep. She had seen all three of them in the business, working from their strengths, marvelously successful.
These final miles before home, she conjured both of them: Bailey and Liv. Bailey increasingly hard to figure, when she had seemed transparent at first: romantic, whimsical, stuck on Liv. It had been the night of the party; Claire saw now how the shift had occurred: Bailey’s remarkable food, the pathways opened in Claire’s mind by the smells and flavors. And Liv, that night she, too, had been different, firmer, stronger. The sex hadn’t changed Claire’s relationship with Bailey, but the food had. The food had earned Claire’s admiration, and inspired, for the first time since her aunt’s death, the possibility—the option—of another direction.
She drove through downtown Spokane, and felt her back muscles ease even as the tension in her jaw and belly increased. They turned at the fir trees, and slowed on the gravel road. Liv’s truck parked beside her camper. Light from inside the house spilled onto the grass, and Claire parked, exhausted suddenly, the thought of carrying Simon indoors almost painful.
“Welcome home,” Liv said, at the window of the car.
Claire sat still, took in Liv’s damp hair, the white t-shirt clinging to her breasts, the smile brilliant against her dark face. She could not name the thing that drew her from the car, only that it was powerful, rending her will—fortified so particularly over a fortnight. Entwined in Liv’s arms, she rested her head a moment and remembered no more.
Simon woke himself laughing. He’d dreamed of Liv, the two of them riding on a llama through the snow. Coming back to himself, and his room, he hopped up and ran to his table, the tracks intricately designed to maximize curves and bridges and tunnels. Found there a large box wrapped in paper with an orange bow.
“Oh, a present,” he whispered. He looked about him, stepped closer, touched the present, glanced at the door to his mother’s room, and then hauled the present back to his bed. He touched the paper, and the bow, and turned the box. It was heavy, and he tore the paper, dropping the package onto his bed. Carefully, he pulled the remaining paper off, working loose each fold and the bow until he exposed the box beneath: Thomas’ Engine Shed and turntable. “Oh,” he said. And then, “I like this present.” Since the box was taped, it wouldn’t come open and he hopped up again and sprinted into his mother’s room. He slowed when he saw Liv, and then threw himself onto the bed.
“Help, this present. Help Simon open this, please. I like it. Open this present now.” He jumped off the bed and ran into his room, then rushed back with the box, nearly toppling both of them.
Grinning, Liv scooped them both—boy and box—onto the bed. “So you like this present, Simon?”
“Oh, yes. I like it.”
She tore the tape away, and let him open the box. He squealed and clapped his hands. On the other side of the bed, his mother stirred.
“I think,” Liv said, “with a big shed like this, you might need more trains.”
“Oh god,” his mother groaned.
“Do you think,” Liv went on, “that you need more trains? Maybe Neville, or Duncan, or Spencer?”
He jumped from the bed, exuberance radiating through him. “Go check your closet,” Liv said.
He hurled into his room, and flung the closet door opened: inside each of his shoes was a new engine. Dropping to his knees, he pulled one out as though it were a gold piece.
From the room next door, Liv called, “Do you like them, Simon?”
“Oh yes,” he whispered, mid-extraction. “I like it. I like this present.”
Liv helped him incorporate the shed into the tracks on his table. Over and over he showed her his new trains, telling her their names, recounting their adventures. He stood close to her, their arms or shoulders touching like grounds. As she reconfigured the track, she reached out to him—his presence a balm, a joy—and tousled his hair.
“I missed you,” she said. “I missed your wild little self.”
Once the track was laid, he circled around the table, trying out different engines and combinations of trains. Giving her assignments, trading out their freight cars.
From the doorway behind them, Claire laughed. “Because he didn’t have enough?”
“Clearly.”
“I’ll make breakfast while you two build.”
Liv debated leaving him then, to see Claire’s face once Claire saw the kitchen, but knew she’d only be trading one joy for another, and so stayed, with the first, and purest.
When they heard Claire scream, Simon’s head snapped up and he listened. She screamed again, and Liv asked if he wanted to go and see too. He grabbed four trains, their tenders unwieldy, and hurried from the room ahead of Liv.
The tile was extraordinary: green and yellow and orange and red all at once and also in fractions like sea stones. Beneath the cabinets in the bright morning light, it seemed to shimmer. As Claire approached it, felt its surface, the refraction calmed, and she could see the artisanal beauty of the work and the pieces.
She had walked through the room several times, her hands on every texture, before she realized that Liv had painted as well. In the time they’d been away, Liv had finished the kitchen. Claire felt them behind her, and turned.
“Don’t you like it?” Liv asked after a moment.
Claire shook her head. She had not imagined this kind of beauty were possible in a mere room. If she opened her mouth, she could not trust herself to speak without sounding like Simon. I like it, this present. Oh yes.
“Come and see the bathroom.”
Claire didn’t think she could. Seeing the bathroom would require moving, and more exposure, and already she felt that her heart was unruly. Could you love someone for making you such a room? Was love as simple as that?
Liv came forward, took her hand, and led her to the bathroom. The pedestal sink, the reddish yellow marble, the large Jacuzzi bath. Liv had painted, and trimmed the wainscoting.
“I’ve only been gone two weeks,” Claire said at last.
“Was that all it was?”
Simon climbed into the empty tub and ran his engines up the sides.
Twenty-one
Something else
Liv hadn’t told Claire about the bar fight. In the end, nothing had come of it; no one had pursued them, nothing had run in the newspaper, it appeared more and more likely that the incident had gone unreported. She and Bailey had decided to avoid the Mercury, and that was the extent of their prudence.
Quiet days, sleepy and intimate: Liv and Claire took Simon on a bicycle ride along the Centennial Trail on Saturday, and to the beach at Coeur d’Alene on Sunday. Liv spent the morning mowing while Claire pruned the shrubbery around the house. They were dark, freckled, and sore. Beneath the cherry tree, Simon waded and splashed in his inflatable pool. Under discussion: a stone walkway from the deck to the riverbank, a project for the two of them.
Late Monday afternoon, Bailey stopped by with Copper River Salmon and new potatoes, fresh baked bread, shrimp and avocado salad. Bailey grilled the salmon, all four of them eating frozen fruit bars. The women groused about the bees and the stark, insinuating heat. On his back in the little pool, Simon blew bubbles with his plastic pipe.
“So, I heard something interesting today,” Bailey said. Liv
and Claire waited. Seated on the railing of the deck, Bailey batted her spatula back and forth as though it were a paddle. “That little café on Grand is for sale, turnkey. They’re asking $145,000.”
“What’s turnkey mean?” Claire asked.
“Everything stays—the equipment and fixtures. They walk out, I walk in—or whoever. I’ve been in the kitchen, though, and they have a lot of rickety old shit. Their dishwasher is just crap. The place would need an upgrade, but it’s a great location.”
“Why are they selling?” Claire asked.
“Divorce, apparently.”
“You’re considering buying this place?” Liv asked.
“Dreaming more like. I know $145,000 just gets me in the door, doesn’t account for start-up, or upgrades, or employees, or anything. But if I had $165,000, say, I could do it. I could have my own bakery, in a great spot, with a built-in clientele. My house as collateral, maybe get a business loan; it’s not so much money, is it?”
“But the risk would be yours,” Liv said, “instead of someone else’s. Financially, that would be wicked stressful, wouldn’t it, worrying about the vendors and bills and payroll and accounting and price of goods, and bringing the business home with you everyday.”
“Liv, wouldn’t your life be less stressful if you didn’t contract independently?”
“I have a low overhead, and no employees, and no rent to pay, and construction is a different animal altogether. Someone always needs work done. I’ve never had a lean time. And it’s just me. If work dried up here for some reason, I’d pick up and go somewhere else. You wouldn’t have that kind of freedom.”
Bailey returned to the grill, plated the salmon, called them all to the table.
“Did you make this bread?” Claire asked. Two bites and she’d found herself a child, beneath a table, an apron pressed to her face, a dusting of flour in her hair. A fragrance she couldn’t name, and in the background, a radio tuned to country.
“This morning. Rosemary’s my favorite.” Bailey’s voice was flat. Her cap pulled low over her eyes, but her mood clear enough. She buttered Simon’s bread; she’d grilled a hamburger for him, and applied a leering face of ketchup. His wet hair stood up in the middle, like a fauxhawk.
Guilty about her lecture, the discouragement she’d occasioned, Liv told Bailey about the rest of the plans for the house: built-in cabinets for Simon’s room, and an update of the master bath. Bailey nodded, rolled a potato around her plate with a fork. In the end, Liv stood, and announced she had a date with Simon: a movie at the Garland, just the two of them, and a vat of popcorn.
“Is it so ridiculous?” Bailey asked Claire after they had gone. “Me with my own café?”
“No,” Claire said. “It isn’t.”
“But risky. She’s right there.”
“She’s right about everything she said, but that doesn’t mean you’re wrong. Anyway, there’s something she never reckoned.”
“What’s that?”
“A partner with capital.”
Bailey sat a moment, digesting. Looked up, disbelieving. “You must be mad. That may be the worst idea I’ve ever heard.”
“Why’s that?”
“The abridged version? You and I have never worked together. Our visions might conflict; I don’t know how you are about money or business or food or employees or anything.”
Claire, dismissive, interrupted: “That’s easily sorted. We’ll know in three months whether or not it’ll work—me as your silent partner. If it doesn’t, it’ll be a loan from me to your café—we’ll have a lawyer write everything up for us—and you can buy me out at a rate of interest one point better than a bank would lend you.”
Bailey stared at her plate. Something took residence in her face that Claire couldn’t interpret. When she spoke again, the words came out strangled, as though she uttered them against her will: “I don’t understand you on even the most basic level. A couple of weeks ago, we had sex and now you’re Holly fucking Homemaker again. I don’t get you. I don’t understand you at all. Liv thinks you’re too good, and I think it’s something else altogether.” Bailey stopped, chagrined, her expression changed again. She extended her hand and wiped it backward and forward as though erasing her sentences. “Sorry. Really, I’m sorry. You have no idea how badly I want this—but not this badly. I’ve got reflux just thinking about it. Never mind that Liv’s against it, and all the unknowns—including whether or not I’m skilled enough to handle the operational side of things—you and I are very grey. It’s confusing. Business is hard enough without dragging all this grey into it.”
“I never realized you were a moralist.”
“Claire, I already said I was sorry. I’m sorry I hurt your feelings and blurted this shit out without taking the time to think it over, to organize my position into bullet points with Vulcan logic. I’m grateful beyond description. Seriously, I’m grateful it even occurred to you. You’re unbelievably generous.”
Claire’s laugh—bitter, sarcastic—punctuated Bailey’s speech. She felt like spitting. On the heels of such an offer, Bailey had insulted her.
“You are so smooth, Bailey,” Claire said, her voice harsh. “It’s a mystery to me, how you’ve stayed single all this time.”
“Take it easy, Claire.”
“So I’m something else altogether? What would that be, Bailey? What is it about me that you find so reprehensible?”
“Oh, god. I have fucked this whole thing up.” Bailey yanked at her hair, sucked in her breath, and exhaled, stalling.
Tears rimmed Claire’s eyes. Something else altogether. Only a viper would say such a thing, an asp. The one thing more painful was Liv thinking Claire too good. The thief, the cheater, the liar too good for Liv, and meanwhile, Bailey refused Claire’s money, and her partnership. Could not even be civil about her rejection. Stung. Bailey had stung her. And then, the final humiliation, Claire burst into sobs and sprinted for the house, but Bailey caught her, held on despite Claire’s struggle.
“Stop it,” Claire hissed. “Let me go.”
“I’m so sorry. Please. Please don’t.” Claire scratched at the flesh of Bailey’s back and arms, kicked her shins, reared back, and finally threw herself onto the deck, wailing openly.
“Stop,” Bailey said, crouching. “Please stop. Claire, I’m so sorry. I’m an ass. If I’d set you on fire, this could have been worse, but that’s about it. I suck. Please stop crying. We should totally work together. Obviously we’d be great business partners—you and me—you offer me the bakery I’ve always wanted, and I kick your character around and make you cry. Oh god.” Bailey knelt on the ground beside Claire, and rubbed her back while she cried.
After she crawled into bed, Liv asked, “Did Bailey stay late?”
“Not too late.”
“I hurt her feelings, about the café. It’s not even a bad idea really. The more I think about it, the more I think she should do it. Bailey’s gifted. The risk would be hers, and I reacted like it would be mine. I almost called her tonight to apologize. Maybe I’ll drop by tomorrow.”
Claire had a headache from crying, and shame probably. A shame headache behind her right eye, that throbbed through her skull. Maybe she was pre-menopausal. Her mood vacillated more wildly now than during her pregnancy. She felt like crying again. On her back, in the dark bedroom, Liv’s arm and leg thrown across her body, Claire wanted to be comforted, and she wanted to be alone. Both notions warred inside her: to bury herself against Liv and weep, and to throw Liv from the room.
“Why so quiet?” Liv asked. “What’s going on?”
“I’m in love with you.” Claire said, tearing again. “Because of the kitchen tile. Bailey said you think I’m too good. And that she doesn’t think I’m good at all. She doesn’t want to be partners. She said I’m Holly Homemaker. And grey. And she doesn’t get me at all. It’s all reflux.” There was more, but it was unintelligible.
This had to be menopause, or a tumor, or grief. She cried so hard that she shoo
k. Stupid baby, she thought, pulling at Liv’s t-shirt. Stupid, stupid baby.
“Who the fuck’s Holly Homemaker?” Liv asked.
Claire hiccupped, wiped her nose, not entirely sure herself.
“You and Bailey had a fight?”
“Yes.”
“You wanted to be partners?”
“Yes.”
“In the café?”
“Yes.”
“But Bailey said no?”
“Yes, because I’m not good. And I give her reflux because I’m grey, and she can’t figure me out at all. She said she didn’t know how I’d be about food, like I’m a freak or something. I really thought this could work: a bakery as a career. I thought I could be a silent partner. I had the whole thing figured out at Glacier. Tonight, when she told us about the restaurant, I thought it was too perfect. I’d had this idea for a partnership, and then Bailey announces this café’s for sale. It was ideal, until she went all you’re reflux on me.”
“Maybe she just needs some time to think it through.”
“Yeah, the offer is null.”
Liv drew her fingertips across Claire’s chest, kissed her wet face. Their breathing regulated. Claire closed her eyes, her urge to cry exhausted.
“You can’t be in love with me because of the kitchen tile,” Liv whispered. “I had a subcontractor put that in.”
“Shut up,” Claire sighed. She curled into Liv, pinched her Achilles tendon with her toes, inhaled the lemony smell of her skin, and dropped into sleep.
Outside the café, beside her car, Bailey stood in her white chef’s uniform, and waved as Liv pulled into the parking lot.
